They said all that about Walter Johnson then Bob Feller. Pitchers have thrown hard forever.
Chamberlain and Russell
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Many have claimed that Duren was the fastest ever. Too bad he had no clue where home plate was. Sandy Koufax became the best ever when he was finally convinced to take a little off his fastball for better control. I can't imagine what his fastball was like before he took a little off.
Right. There was one guy who threw that hard in the 20s. And then another in the 50s. And then a couple more in the 70s. And a few others scattered here and there. And now there are dozens.
Pretty much exactly the same.
If you think that the average pitcher in the 1920s or 1950s or 1970s threw anywhere near as hard as the average pitcher today does then you are simply woefully uninformed.
We have no idea how hard the average pitcher threw back then. I only named a few guys and you took it to say they were the only two. I agree there are plenty of pitchers who throw in the mid 90s today. We are simply uninformed as to how many there were back then.
YOU might be uninformed, but WE aren't.
Come on, the number of people who think that pitchers threw just as hard in the 70s as they do today is you and maybe a handful of other people. You are acting as if there wasn't anyone who payed attention to stuff like that back then. You act as if there aren't all sorts of people who work in baseball and have for a long time who talk about the way that pitching has changed over the years.
Like I said, it was a big deal back in the early 80s that the Pirates had ONE guy who regularly threw 90 mph. Today, literally every pitcher who pitches for most teams regularly throws 90. At least. There are teams today that won't select a high school pitcher in the draft unless he is already regularly hitting 90 as an 18 year old.
Pitching has completely changed from the way it was 50 years ago. If you don't see that you are woefully uninformed.
There were a few that could really bring it back then...Bob Feller, Ryan. Gibson, etc. They'd be fine today, but 95 is common now, with 100+ from lots of guys.
With all that speed, and a tricked up ball, lots of ballparks can't hold them.
Well I think that lots of those guys would be fine today. Assuming that we give them today's training techniques and today's usage. Guys back then didn't really throw all out because they knew they were expected to still be out there on the mound after having thrown 8 innings and 140 pitches. Guys today know that if they've thrown 6 innings and 100 pitches that they aren't going out there for the 7th inning, so there is no incentive to hold something back. And relievers are the same way. Think of all the innings a guy like Elroy Face threw as a reliever, or a guy like Dave Guisti. Those guys came into the game frequently knowing that they might have to pitch two or even three innings. And then they might have to come back tomorrow and do it again. Guys today, the back end of the bullpen guys, don't throw two or three innings at a time other than on rare occassions. And if they did they would basically never be put in the game the next day and be expected to do the same thing again. So again, they have no incentive to hold anything back like the guys did 50 years ago.
It isn't that most guys back then COULDN'T throw harder, it's that because of the way the game was played they DIDN'T throw harder.
They showed game seven of the 60 series on AT&T Pittsburgh last month. If you watched that game and couldn't see the difference in pitching velocity between that game and a game played now it can only be because you don't know what you are watching.
Totally agree. The guys of yesteryear did not have the training nor the juice that these guys have today. If they did, they would’ve thrown just as hard.
Wilt was a heck of a high jumper but his self reported vertical isn't exactly hard data. Howard's was 40" in his prime fwiw.
Wilt tall tale stuff is fun but I'd take it all with a grain of salt. What exists on film is a very, very athletic player but I'm not sure it's much different than Orlando Magic era Shaq going up against slow 6'9" centers. And for part of his career, there was a "gentleman's agreement" on black players per team.
It doesn't take away from Wilt's individual dominance in 1964 to say that 50.4 points a game then may "only" be 35 points a game now. They had the "three chances to get two" rule for free throws for a large portion of his career as well as the highest number of shots per game in NBA history in terms of pace.
Neither did Wilt
No NBA player in the last 20 years has had a running vertical greater than 42 inches. A 7-footer in the 60s certainly didn't.
Wilt was a great athlete. At KU, he once went through 9 of the events in the decathlon. His scores for those exceeded the record at the time, w/o even trying the pole vault. He also beat Hal Greer in a court length race. All this, pre-steroids.
Yeah he also could dunk from the half court line! And once triple jumped out of Overbrook high school!
Joking aside, he was an absurd athlete. Totally agree. Just noting how different the game was. How would Shawn Kemp have done in 1963? We have no clue but my guess is he would have been pretty dominant considering how below the rim a lot of forwards outside of Elgin Baylor were back then.
Johnny Green could jump with anyone around today....and he'd still be mediocre. Most bigs back then were slow and unathletic. A few exceptions like Russell, Thurmond, etc.
Don't forget the claim that he could bench press 500+lbs, with a 95" wingspan... You'd think that someone who liked to boast about his own feats so often would actually want to, you know, record any of these things. He was still claiming to be able to bench 465 in the 90s when he was in his late 50s.
The faster you throw it the further it travels . Guys with that great of eye hand coordination would be superstars no matter when or who they played against .
Anyone think guys like Bob Gibson’s & Sandy Koufax weren’t every bit as good as anyone pitching today ? The real difference in bb today is the closers .
As far as Wilt and Russell it’s not like saying where would a 210 lb linebacker (#58) who probably runs a 4.8 forty play in today’s NFL . Both were two of the greatest centers in professional bb with the size and skills to play today . Wilt was physically the greatest center of all time and Russell was the ultimate team player ,
If Wilt and Kareem played against each other in their primes I’m not sure either could stop the others
offense . I think the edge would go to Wilt on his strength , but I’d pay to see that !
Wilt was better on offense Russell was the only guy who slowed him down. Great history.
In 1960 there were 3 guys who hit 40+ home runs last yr there were 9 guys in the forty’s plus one guy hitting 53 . The harder you throw it the further it flies when you hit it .
Wilt had pretty damn good stats against Russell. But Russell had better teams around him.
Maybe more coherent and better coached teams but I'm not sure had more talented teams overall. Wilt played with a lot of greats too -- West, Baylor, Goodrich, Greer, Cunningham, Chet Walker. Russell just had an edge I don't think Wilt had.
Russell was a team leader would throw up before every big game and was crazy competitive. Wilt skipped a lot of practices in Philly because he lived in New York and (to his credit as a renaissance man) had a lot of "interests" outside of basketball. Jerry West said recently that if Tinder existed in his day, the Lakers would have more titles because Wilt spent too much energy trying to find women at clubs.
By the way, for the how hard did pitchers throw the ball back in the day, right now the MLB Network is showing game seven of the 79 World Series. Scott McGregor started the game for the Orioles. He was a pretty good pitcher for a pretty long time. Seven winning seasons in a row while starting as many as 37 games in a season and a career winning percentage of .561, for example.
Early in the game Howard Cosell noted that McGregor's fastball topped out at 87 mph.
Early in the game Howard Cosell noted that McGregor's fastball topped out at 87 mph.
Bill Russell was the ultimate pro athlete because you play the games to win championships. He was the final piece of the Celtic dynasty puzzle. His rookie season was the first of 10 straight NBA championships and 11 in 12 seasons.
Russell was crafty on and off the court, his defense , passing, wit, and team play were acknowledged by all.
Off the court his antics supported his winning ways. Russell never had a sports agent he would tell the Celtics at contract time I want $1 more than what Wilt makes. This way he didn't have to pay for an agent, then prior to start of the game against Wilt he would meet up on the court remind Wilt he made more money than him and the fine job Wilt's agent did for both of them.
Russell was crafty on and off the court, his defense , passing, wit, and team play were acknowledged by all.
Off the court his antics supported his winning ways. Russell never had a sports agent he would tell the Celtics at contract time I want $1 more than what Wilt makes. This way he didn't have to pay for an agent, then prior to start of the game against Wilt he would meet up on the court remind Wilt he made more money than him and the fine job Wilt's agent did for both of them.
Tom Glavin didn’t throw smoke , but was a pretty effective pitcher .
Great hitters would adjust if they constantly faced guys throwing mid 90’s . Your not in the HOF if you can’t adjust to different pitchers and speeds .
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According to a story on espn Glavin's fastball was at 93-94 mph. Maddux would actually be a slightly better guy to use, because he was generally at 90-91. But the list of guys in baseball history with the sort of control that Maddux (and to a lesser extent Glavine) had is really, really small.
Of course they would. But it's a lot harder. If you throw mid-90s or better with movement you start to get into the territory where guys have to guess to hit it. And guys who have to guess don't hit very well.
For several reason, most of which are simply physics. If you throw the ball harder then when I hit it well I hit the ball harder. Balls that are hit harder go further. Last year it's pretty obvious that MLB screwed with the ball, which made it harder for pitchers to spin, which meant that pitches generally went straighter. Balls that are straight are easier to hit than balls that have movement to them, because there is less guesswork in where the ball is going. Balls that are easier to hit can be hit harder, because you aren't fooled as often and you are making solid contact more often. And bats are significantly better now than they were in 1960. They are lighter, which would actually hurt distance in a vacuum, but the upshot of lighter bats with thinner handles is that guy's bat speed on average is higher than it used to be, and faster bats make balls go further. And of course players are bigger and stronger on average than they were back then, and when a bigger, stronger guy makes good contact the ball goes further than when a smaller, not as strong guy does.
There are also things like the average ball park is smaller now than it was back then (just compare the dimensions of Forbes Field to PNC Park). And most players back then would do things like choke up on the bat with two strikes to not strike out whereas players now understand that if you are a power hitter in today's game that's a fool's errand. And so on.
The high jumper (from a track standpoint) was Russell. He nearly qualified for the Olympic team as a high jumper as well as in basketball.
Exaggeration, but . . . he once came up with the solution to his free-throw malady, He would take a running start, take off just a step behind the free throw line . . . and dunk the free throw.
That caused them to pass the rule that the free throw shooter had to stay behind the line until the ball entered the cylinder.
I also remember reading his autobiography (not the one in which he made the 10,000 woman claim) during one of my summers home from Temple. In that one, he did boast that as a high schooler, he won the Philadelphia city championship in the quarter-mile. I figured no way. When I got back to campus that fall, the first thing I did was look up the Philly newspapers for that time period on microfilm. Wouldn't you know, the summary of that all-City meet had a W. Chamberlain from Overbrook finishing first.
The dunk from the foul lone anecdote exists only in one source, though admittedly it was very early in his career so there was less basketball journalism generally. But I tend to think it's possible, we've seen Dwight Howard basically do it as a big, and Wilt was possibly even a little better leaper than that. You'd think he'd get tired doing that long jump dunk 15-20 times a game, maybe it's be more like a finger roll from the dots after a smaller jump by the end.
My dad played for Bartram when Wilt was at Overbrook. Crazy thing is their team may have been even better the year after Wilt left, they had 4 or 5 other guys who were big time players.
Which means guys like Mantle, Mays , Marris and Arron if they played today with guys throwing harder all would have bigger numbers .
Singer Johnny Mathis, who was also a very good high jumper, and one of Russell's best friends when they were in school, talked about how good of a high jumper Russell was. I wonder how good he would have been had the Fosbury Flop been around then?
This seems appropriate.
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/5/18/21260106/michael-jordan-the-last-dance-evolution
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2020/5/18/21260106/michael-jordan-the-last-dance-evolution
Not necessarily, but possibly. It's also possible that they wouldn't be as good. If you are talking about giving those guys career long access to today's training and nutrition and other information then yeah, they may very well be. If you did the "put them in a time machine and drop them into 2020" then they'd have to make a huge adjustment to be high level players. Could they do that? Sure. Could they fail at doing that? Sure.
The game is different. For some guys that would work to their advantage. For other guys it would work to their detriment.
The game has become deluded since the expansion of the league , HOF guys of the 60’s would be superstars today .
The pool of talent that major league baseball draws from today is vastly larger than the one that they drew from in 1960.
When teams need to pay a lefty middle relief pitcher with a 4+ ERA 7-10 million a yr the owners might disagree !
Plus young black kids have drifted away from playing baseball playing bb and Fb instead .
You mean as opposed to 1960 when many black players still couldn't play in the majors because of racism?
Baseball today gets players from the Dominican, Venezuela, Mexico, Cuba, all of the Caribbean Some of the best players from places like Japan and South Korea come here to play. And of course there are approximately 85% more Americans today than there were in 1960, and most of them have the chance to play baseball as kids if they so choose. That most certainly was NOT the case in 1960.
In short, the pool of players that MLB draws from today is easily twice as big as it was back in 1960. Easily.
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